Twenty Years
by The Croc Shop
Summary: Futurefic. Just another thrilling Friday evening for Roxanne Ritchi.


Disclaimer: I do not own nor do I claim to own any characters or concepts related to _Megamind_. This is a nonprofit work of fanfiction.

Notes: This is set several years after the film (the title should give you a clue as to how many).

* * *

**Twenty Years**

* * *

"Miss Ritchi?"

She focused again, drawn out of her reverie. The skyline glimmered, each metal and glass peak catching the last drop of light before the sun vanished beneath the horizon. Roxanne turned from the window.

The girl at the door smiled. She'd a familiar face, small and round. For the life of her, Roxanne couldn't think of a name.

"I'm sorry," Roxanne said, then it came to her, "Tracy. I must not have heard you knock."

"Oh, no, I'm sorry to disturb you," Tracy said. She came forward. "I just wanted to let you know Rodgers had to leave early, but he told me to give you this. He said it's finished except for your approval, I mean." She set the file folder down upon Roxanne's desk.

Roxanne smiled. "Thank you. Was he feeling well?" she said after a beat. "Rodgers."

"I think so?" Tracy scrunched her nose. "I think he had a date."

"Ah," said Roxanne. She nicked the folder and tapped it meaningfully on the desk. "Lucky guy."

"Very lucky," Tracy agreed.

Roxanne looked to the window again. Sunlight lanced off the Hunts Building, throwing out kaleidoscopic arms.

"Did you need anything, Miss Ritchi?" said Tracy.

"No," she said. She smiled again, reflexively. "No, thank you. Tracy." She lifted the folder as if to wave. "I'll get back to Rodgers."

Tracy nodded, bobbing, and slipped out on quiet feet. The door clicked behind her.

Roxanne leaned back in her chair and stared out across Metro City, brilliant but fading with the advent of night. Soon lights would rise up from the city, so bright as to drown out the stars, and Roxanne would rise and sort out her desk for tomorrow and lock her office behind her before she walked out into the night. She closed her eyes and turned in her chair, her foot the rudder on the carpet, guiding her through soft loops.

She supposed she could stay late. Five for five, she thought, thinking of Monday and Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday, each day falling into the one before. She needed to review Rodgers' proposal for the ten o'clock, and what they were going to do with only one anchor, she didn't know. What they always did: wing it. Rodgers, she thought.

The sun slipped low, nearly at rest. The Hunts Building stood dark now but for the lights spotting its windows. A last sliver of sunlight shivered along the watercourse.

Roxanne looked to Rodgers' file, a corner hanging off her desk. Folders and thick binders littered her desk; she couldn't remember her editor's desk ever looking so cluttered. Sooner or later she'd have to organize it. Throw out the trash, keep the rest. Her nameplate stood facing out, a long, polished rectangle in its sacred place. That, at least, she kept clean.

"Priorities," she said to herself.

Then she drew up to her desk and began rooting through the stacks, dragging out a file, a slim binder containing the next week's schedule, a few folders. She set them one by one on top of Rodgers' proposal and looked for her bag, tucked beneath the desk.

Her winter coat, a sleek red affair with brassy buttons, hung from a hook by the door. She grabbed it before she slipped out. Autumn bled into winter, and harsh winds blew down Metro City's streets, those long valleys between its skyscrapers.

Her secretary, William, looked up as she locked her door.

"Oh, Miss Ritchi," he said. "Leaving early?"

She threw him a smile. "More or less. I'm going to do some work at home. Forward any calls from Calhoun to my cell."

"And the rest?" he said.

"Take a message so I can ignore it later," she said.

He laughed at the old joke, not because it was funny—and if it had ever been funny, she thought, that had been long ago—but because it was old.

"Don't stay too late!" she called.

"Oh, I never do," he called back, and she laughed as she stepped into the elevator.

Cheap music whispered through the overhead speaker, a smooth jazz cover of a popular song she'd heard once years before at her niece's graduation. The bag pulled on her shoulder. She adjusted the strap, tucking the bag around against her belly; and tipping her head back, she listened as the piano tinkled and a horn blew soft and clumsy. The elevator shushushed down its tracks.

* * *

Home glowed, the front windows of the first aboveground storylit. She parked at the foot of the hill, behind the gate and the laser grid. Her bag, her coat, her keys— Roxanne locked the car and tucked the keys in her pocket, then she set up the hill. The breeze, cold with night, tugged at her sleeves.

She spilled into the house, shivering. Three of the brainbots crowded her, humming as they rounded the corner and fell upon her. Roxanne laughed and petted the smallest's dome. Electricity arced beneath the glass, chasing after her fingers.

"Yes, Mommy's home early," she said. "I missed you, too. Okay, okay, get down." She held her hands up between them. "I have work to do. We can play later."

Sila, so small, wrapped its tendrils about her wrist and followed her down the hall.

"You're going to have to learn to let go one day," she told it, but Sila didn't understand humor and no one else was there to laugh.

The house was cool, kept to a brisk sixty-three degrees: warm after the winds and chill of late autumn out in Metro City, but still enough to call goosebumps from her arms. He preferred it cool, a special property, and it was easier for Roxanne to put on a sweater than Megamind to strip out of his skin.

Still. She ticked the thermostat up two degrees in passing. It wouldn't do much, but she liked to think of those numbers rising, of sixty-three rising to sixty-four, then -five.

The lights flicked on before her and off in her wake, blazing sequentially as she passed through the house. Sila bobbed along beside her, then flittered away as she climbed up the stairs into a halo of light. A quick shower and a sweater, a pair of sweatpants, a reheated pizza, and she'd be set for another thrilling Friday evening in.

The house was quiet, its rooms empty but for the brainbots as they went about their chores and their elaborate games. She passed through the bedroom on her way to the shower. Another mess there: the sheets rumpled, a pillow on the floor, bits of uniform shed on the floor, shoes lopsided and mismatched and scattered before the closet. The brainbots were warded from the room, and neither she nor he had much mind for cleaning the closet or making the bed in the dark hours of morning.

"Just look at this mess," she said, and she smiled, her heart warm.

Roxanne dug out a sweater and her rattiest sweatpants, a holdover from the last reckless dash to cull her wardrobe lo those many years ago. She closed the bathroom door but she didn't draw the curtain.

* * *

Downstairs, she spread her files out across the coffee table, a lamp her brightest company but the wineglass her best. Through the bay windows, across the water, Metro City shone on into the night. Roxanne refilled her glass, then poured a smidge back into the bottle. She did have work in the morning.

He came home at half past ten as Roxanne finished the amendments to Rodger's proposal and somewhere in Metro City, another party began. The brainbots buzzed, their electrical zinging as good as the joyous bark of a dog.

Megamind came to the doorway. He'd soot on his cheek and his suit, dark against the white. He cradled his elbow at his side. Roxanne rested her head on the back of the couch and smiled. The wine rested warm and sweet in her belly.

"How'd it go with the Legion?" she said.

"Terrible," he said. "You know what they're like. Superpowered jocks all fighting to be the first to kick the Togvok Armada's collective butt before the other guy."

"That sounds like villain talk to me," she said.

He stripped off his gloves and collapsed beside her. He smelled of ash and ozone burn, and faintly of sweat.

She'd watched the satellite news on mute while working through an investigative piece. When she spotted him in the aftermath of the conflict—that bulbous space helmet, his blue skin, alive, alive, alive—she'd blown her breath out, her heart a trembling thing in her chest.

He scrubbed at his face. His goatee, dyed black, showed between his fingers.

"Ugh," he said, "what a nightmare."

Roxanne leaned against him, her shoulder to his.

"You're home now," she said.


End file.
